Page:The story of Greece told to boys and girls.djvu/184

 bitter thing to him to leave the city that he loved so well. In his absence he knew that Themistocles would be able to carry out his plans unopposed, and this added to his pain.

But Themistocles was wiser than Aristides when he urged the Athenians to increase their fleet. For although the great king Darius was dead, Xerxes his son was preparing to invade Greece as his father had hoped to do. And without a large and well-equipped fleet, the Athenians would have been unable to meet the Persians at sea.